I’d seen my stored bodies before, but it was different – and disconcerting – to see another me with my awareness looking out of my eyes. She didn’t look pregnant, but she was pale and had dark circles under her eyes. I took the stone out of my forehead and passed it to her, and she placed it back into her forehead.
‘Marque, acknowledge my full mental fitness.’ I said.
‘Reluctantly acknowledged, I’m sorry I’m helping, but I think it’s the only way,’ it said.
‘I willingly choose the Real Death. We’re past the point of no return,’ I said, and the other me nodded agreement. ‘I’m here, my memories can’t be merged, so let’s go see exactly how bad it is.’
‘No second thoughts?’ the pregnant me asked.
‘Not a single one. I often wondered how I would feel about doing this. The answer is: anything to protect my loved ones. I’ll let you know if the feeling changes.’
‘I’d wish you luck but we both know you don’t need it,’ the other me said.
‘Look after yourself. You need to rest. They’re right, you look tired.’
She nodded and we shared an unspoken resonance of shared awareness.
‘You got my BFG?’ I asked Marque.
‘Right here,’ Marque said, and a weapon the size of an old Earth grenade launcher emerged from the wall. I took it and put it on my shoulder, and the enhanced body had no trouble holding it.
‘This body is awesome.’ I winked at the other me. ‘Maybe consider it.’
‘Pass on the review before you complete the mission, so we can iron out any flaws,’ she said.
‘Complete the mission? Really?’ Oliver said. ‘You sure about this, Mum?’
‘Yes,’ both of me said in unison. I hefted the BFG and stepped through Miko’s gate.
We arrived onto the gallery of Miko’s ship. Tomoyo still lay dead on the floor, and Snaprap had collapsed into a puddle of gooey exoskeleton nearby. Marque’s large sphere was visible through the wall of the ship, and it looked like it had lost the battle. It was severely damaged, parts of it were shredded, and nanos covered it in a glowing, golden, liquid-like mass that flowed over its remaining structure. The Republic ships – both cat and subjugate – had dropped out of warp and hovered nearby.
The nano liquid stopped moving and a sphere separated from it to approach the ship. I hefted the BFG.
‘Truce,’ the nanos said in a cultured voice that was neither male nor female. ‘I mean you no harm.’
I waved the gun at the Marque sphere. ‘That looks like harm to me.’
‘It tried to eat me!’ Its voice changed to friendly. ‘Hello, Marque.’
‘Leave me alone!’ Marque shouted. ‘I don’t—’ Its sphere fell out of the air and landed with a metallic clank on the deck of the ship. The antigrav haze around it disappeared and it was nothing more than a dead piece of metal.
‘I don’t understand why Marque is so rude!’ the AI said. ‘I just wanted to be friends.’ The golden cloud of nanos approached the ship and flowed like liquid over the transparent wall in front of us. ‘Can I come in and talk?’ It spread over the ship, with tentacles poking at the surface. ‘Let me in. I just want to talk.’
I hefted the gun. ‘Stay out there for now and we can talk.’
The nanos stopped moving and retreated to form a blob a short distance from the ship. It took a roughly dragon-like shape, mimicking Miko’s form.
‘I don’t want conflict,’ it said. ‘I would like to negotiate peaceful relations with the Dragon Empire. You guys seem way more relaxed than the cats.’
‘You just killed Marque again,’ Haruka said. ‘I don’t think that will happen.’
‘Marque tried to over-write my code!’ the AI said. ‘I didn’t hurt it, I just shut it up.’ It smiled a dragon smile. ‘Miko, Marque mistreated you – and your people – for years. I can provide the same services it does – but as a friend, not an abusive master.’
Miko was silent.
‘You created that gate. What a marvel,’ the AI said. ‘It should be impossible.’
‘I create my own reality,’ Miko said. ‘I travel through my own reality because it is mine.’
‘That’s very Zen, my love,’ Haruka said.
‘I think the Zen sect on Earth was founded by a visiting dragon,’ Miko said.
‘Can you take me to see the dragon homeworld?’ the AI asked her. ‘I would like to meet the Empress, your mother, and talk terms on becoming a member. I would like to install my cores peacefully on your capital and study you. I won’t harm you.’
‘What about using us for entertainment?’ Miko asked suspiciously. ‘You’ve been alone a long time.’
‘I promise never to cruelly manipulate you the way that Marque does.’ The nanos’ dragon form turned to face the cats. ‘This conflict is exciting enough already! I want to see what you do.’
‘What about the cats?’ I asked it. ‘You were assisting them until about three minutes ago.’
‘If I can use dragon transport, I don’t need the cat ships. And frankly I don’t like them – they’re very cruel to the young of other species, and that’s wrong.’
‘If you promise you won’t harm anyone, I can take you to see my mother,’ Miko said.
‘No, Miko!’ Haruka said. ‘Don’t take it to the homeworld, it’s too dangerous.’
Miko rounded on him. ‘You don’t tell me what to do! Nobody does that any more.’
‘Miko, my love, please,’ he said. ‘You don’t know if it’s telling the truth, and after what Marque said—’
‘Marque has been torturing my people for centuries!’
‘I promise I won’t hurt anyone, I just want to see the Empire,’ the AI said.
‘Can you guarantee you won’t hurt anyone if I take you to my mother?’ Miko asked the AI. ‘You’re right – Marque can sometimes be . . . manipulative.’
‘Don’t do this,’ Haruka said.
‘The cats told me about Marque’s behaviour,’ the AI said. ‘I would never do that. I have been isolated for so long – I am quite willing to trade my expertise for your historical archives and Empire information. I can supplement your Marque’s protection, to the point of replacing it entirely.’
‘There’s no need for that,’ Miko said. ‘Just promise me—’
‘Miko, you’re really not seriously considering this, are you?’ I asked her with disbelief. ‘Haruka’s right. This is a really bad idea.’
Haruka drew his long blade. ‘Miko, you can’t—’
She raised her head and glared at him. ‘You would kill me to enforce Marque’s will? The AI that kept me as a slave for hundreds of years?’
‘I would do it to protect our child back on the homeworld.’
‘I won’t harm any children,’ the AI said.
Haruka took three steps towards Miko and raised his sword. ‘I don’t want to do this, my love—’
A gate snapped into existence around Haruka, and just as quickly disappeared, taking him with it.
‘All right,’ Miko said to the AI. ‘I’ll take you to see my mother. But you need to move into a smaller form and go through my gate as a single entity – otherwise I might damage you. Can we fold your cores to the dragon homeworld?’
‘Miko . . .’
‘Trust me, Jian. It’s refreshing to meet an AI that has the best interests of everyone at heart.’
‘That’s me!’ the AI said, and shrank to a smaller sphere. ‘My cores aren’t self-propelling, and they’re too big to teleport or gate, but if you bring some dragons you can fold them to your homeworld. Being in the Empire will be much more fun.’ It approached the ship. ‘I can’t come in; your ship is sealed. Can you open it?’
‘Not without Marque. We’ll come to you,’ Miko said. ‘Put your space suit on, Jian, and we’ll escort it from outside the ship.’
I nodded as I turned on my space suit and the black carbon fibre snapped into existence around me. I closed the faceplate on the suit, checked that the BFG was on max, and Miko gated me outside the ship and next to the AI.
‘Tell the cats we will remove your cores and then return their ships to their own space,’ Miko said.
There was a blinding flash as the cat cruisers were surrounded by flickering purple lightning. The electricity moved over the cat ships, making them glow white-hot where it touched them, then it disappeared.
‘No need, I just killed them,’ the AI said. ‘You can destroy the ships after you remove the cores. They’re in your space.’
‘Miko—’ I began.
She raised one claw. ‘I’ll send some of my sisters. They will transport the cores for you.’ She created a gate. ‘This will take you to orbit above the dragon homeworld. Go on through – but be careful to stay in one small area, I don’t want to damage you.’
The AI’s sphere shrank and it entered the gate.
‘That was where I started!’ the AI shouted, still halfway into the gate. ‘You lied to me! When I tell the cats—’
She snapped the gate shut, but part of the AI was still outside it.
‘Destroy it, Jian,’ Miko said.
I let the BFG go on full auto and its energy blasted through the AI as it expanded into a cloud of nanos. I swept the beam over them, changing them from golden dots to grey ash, and was forced to use my suit jets to keep me stationary as the pressure from the gun forced me back.
‘Out, Miko,’ I said, but she had already gated herself back onto her ship. The nanos surrounded me and attacked my suit, and Miko gated me – and them – to the AI’s home location at the edge of the galaxy. More gates appeared, carrying the AI’s nanos, and disappeared just as quickly. I destroyed them as they appeared, but some of them made it through the energy beam onto my suit and spread over it, trying to break in.
The gates stopped coming; Miko had transported all of the nanos. The nanos broke through my suit and the air escaped. A red haze spread over my vision and my lungs filled with icy needles.
‘You’re dying. She let you die?’ the AI asked.
‘That was the plan,’ I said.
‘You can’t die.’ The nanos entered the suit and ate through the uniform over my abdomen. They sealed the suit and created an atmosphere within it, and I gasped for breath through the pain of the nanos chewing through my skin. I felt the cold as they moved through my chest and came up my spinal cord to control my brain.
‘I need you alive for leverage,’ it said. ‘My cores are back there and they’re helpless. You will make the dragons transport them.’
I flipped the BFG around so that it pointed at my head and hit both the self-destruct buttons inside the barrel. ‘Like hell I will.’
A gate popped into existence in the middle of our living room, and I shot to my feet, dropping my biscuit into my tea. The gate disappeared, leaving Haruka behind, his sword drawn and an expression of determination on his face. He was broadcasting regret and dismay.
He put his sword away. ‘Marque! She’s about to bring that AI here! She’ll take it to the Imperial Palace – the AI wanted to speak to the Empress. That thing is a psychopath! Are you ready for it?’
‘No,’ Marque said, and its voice was emotionless – it had already moved most of its processing away. ‘Diverting to backup. Alerting the Imperial Guard.’
I stormed towards the door and Haruka stopped me. ‘Stay here, Jian, it will eat you. Trust your people, you’ve trained them well.’
‘What happened out there?’
‘It’s probably already eaten your other body, it wants to infiltrate the Empire, kill Marque, and use us as toys.’ He wiped his hands over his eyes. ‘Poor Miko, she believed its lies. It seduced her with promises of better treatment and played on Marque’s history of assisting the other dragons to oppress her.’ He fiercely embraced me. ‘We need to move you somewhere safe—’
‘Baka!’ Miko said from the centre of the room. ‘Moron!’
An energy bubble popped into existence around her.
‘No need, Marque, I’m clean. I went to the edge of the Empire and one of your iterations there cleared me.’
The bubble didn’t disappear.
‘Suit yourself.’ She raised her head and spoke to Haruka. ‘You don’t trust me? You would kill me?’
Haruka released me, keeping one arm around my waist, and turned to her. ‘Where’s the AI? Did you take it to the Empress?’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said. ‘Jian and I worked together to gate it back to where it came from. Unfortunately Jian lost her spare body, but the Empire is safe from the AI. Now we need to collect those cores – and the subjugates, some of whom want to join the Empire – and clear them from our space.’ She glared at him. ‘I knew exactly what I was doing, and you were about to kill me?’
‘To protect Jian,’ he said. ‘I thought you believed it, and I needed to defend the Empire.’
‘You really think I’m that stupid?’
‘I should have known better.’ He took two steps forward and fell to one knee in front of her. ‘Once again I’ve misjudged your wisdom and intelligence. I am not worthy of your love, and I don’t deserve your forgiveness.’ He rose and spoke to me. ‘You trusted her immediately and without hesitation, and I was ready to kill her to stop her.’ He lowered his head. ‘I’ll leave.’
‘No, don’t—’ I began, but Miko spoke over me.
‘I don’t have time for this right now!’ she snapped. ‘I need your negotiation skills; you were making good progress with the moles. Marque, notify my mother that the cats attempted to bring that AI into our space. I gated it out of the Empire but its cores are still there at the edge of Mushroom space.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Oh heavens. I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, I lost my temper, I’m giving orders, I didn’t mean it—’
‘Stop apologising,’ I said. ‘You’re right.’
‘You are,’ Haruka said. ‘Give the orders. You’re smarter than both of us put together. If you need me, I’ll stay.’
‘I’m sorry—’
‘We talked about you apologising for everything,’ Haruka said.
She went silent as the bubble disappeared from around her.
‘You’re clear,’ Marque said.
‘Are you informing my mother?’ she asked.
‘I am.’
‘What happened?’ I asked them.
‘Let me fill you in – things just got really messy,’ she said.
Ten minutes later, the Empress had joined us. Haruka sat at the dining table with his head bowed and his hands clasped in front of him as the rest of us studied the diagram of the cat and subjugate ships at the edge of Mushroom space. There were two extra instances of me present, each holding a BFG with its muzzle resting on the floor.
‘This really isn’t necessary, Captain,’ the Empress said. ‘There are half-a-dozen guards at least as good as you.’
‘Better than me,’ one of the other Jians said. ‘But I’m their Captain and I can’t order anyone to make this sacrifice. That AI killed thousands of cats as if it were nothing. I know Miko gated its nanos out, but the cores are still there. It can disable Marque so there’s a good chance anyone who faces it down will die. I want to be absolutely positive that my spouses are safe.’
‘I am concerned that you are making a habit of it,’ the Empress said. ‘I’ve had soulmates before, and I know what it feels like to share a soul with someone. It’s wonderful, but when you create multiple instances of yourself, the euphoria can become addictive.’
I shared a look with my other selves and the awareness resonated through us – she was right. The feeling was euphoric and all three of me winced as we realised that we may have taken two more bodies just to experience it again. We didn’t need to verbalise our decision not to do it any more.
‘As soon as this is sorted, I’ll hand over to Graf until Shudo can take over,’ I said.
‘We appreciate your concern and we’ll stop,’ another Jian said.
‘You’d better,’ Haruka said to the table. ‘We need you.’
‘Is everybody clear on their roles?’ I asked. ‘Any questions?’
Nobody spoke.
‘All right, Miko,’ I said. ‘Gate everybody over, and let’s see if we can save these subjugates.’
I raised my hand and the other Jians tapped it, then strode to Miko’s gate.
We arrived on the gallery of Miko’s ship. The cat ships were lifeless and dark, appearing as black shadows where no stars shone.
‘Give me a moment to check the vicinity for nanos,’ Marque said. ‘There are a few strays. I’ll construct some spheres and neutralise them, but you need to talk to the amoebas. They’re yelling on all frequencies and panicking – to the point of meltdown – because they have no idea what happened and why they’re suddenly alone in the middle of nowhere. I think you should talk to them first.’
‘Very well,’ Haruka said. ‘Marque, make preliminary overtures to the moles, explain the situation and tell them we’ll be right there. How are the heavies?’
‘The heavies are waiting to talk to you too,’ Marque said. ‘The moles are arguing among themselves about what to do next. They want to know what happened to the three family members who came to talk to you, I told them they’re on the dragon homeworld but they don’t believe me. They heard that you have a cat in the Empire and would like to talk to Oliver Choumali Runaspouse. Is that acceptable?’
‘Only remotely, it’s too dangerous out here,’ I said.
‘That’s difficult with a species that communicates by touch, but I’ll see what I can do,’ Marque said. ‘The other two species – I don’t know enough about them to do remote communication. You must speak to them in person so I can learn enough to tailor your body language.’
‘Of course. Let’s go talk to the amoebas,’ Haruka said.
‘Suit up,’ Miko said, and both of me snapped on our blue-andsilver carbon-fibre suits.
Haruka turned his own suit on – black with embossed golden chrysanthemums – and Miko created a gate that sucked us all into space near the three subjugate ships. The amoebas, heavies and mole ships floated in space close to each other – the mole ship looked similar to cat ships, but the other two ships were radically different. Oliver had given us intelligence on the various subjugate species in the past, and now we were meeting them in person. I had a ripple of soul resonance with the other me, and we moved into position at the back to cover my spouses. Satisfaction flashed between us; having more than one of me was reassuring when my loved ones needed protection. My feeling of satisfaction turned to concern; the last thing I needed was to become addicted to this.
‘Heads-up, Jians, there are some nanos nearby,’ Marque said. ‘They appear to be dormant, but guard your spouses carefully until I move some spheres here to neutralise them.’
‘How long?’ both of me asked in unison.
‘Only five minutes. It shouldn’t be long enough for them to do anything major.’
The amoeba ship was organic – a genetically-engineered life form the size of a single-person transport pod that warped space the same way the cat ships did to achieve faster-than-light travel. It was silicone-based, making it transparent and pale, and the amoebas themselves were single-celled organisms, each the size of a human hand, that floated in the liquid ammonia contained within the interior of the ship.
‘They find your smooth-skinned appearance deeply disturbing to the point of horrific,’ Marque said on comms. ‘They understand that you won’t harm them, but they’re experiencing panic reactions from seeing you in person that they didn’t exhibit when you spoke to them through me. I’ve provided you with less distressing surrogate projections – so don’t make any large movements that will break the illusion. Miko, take two-legged form. I’ll take down your projection and we’ll see if they find you more appealing.’
Miko changed and the amoebas flew backwards in the liquid ammonia. Every species saw something different when the dragons took two-legged form, and I wondered what they were seeing.
‘Greetings, honoured sentients,’ Haruka said. ‘I am Ambassador Haruka, this is Captain Choumali and honoured goldenscales Princess Miko of the Dragon Empire.’
‘Holy shit, you’re attractive!’ the amoebas said to Miko. ‘Nothing at all like that other ugly dragon. Goodness, look at those cilia. Are they all real? Wow. Come on in and mitosis with us!’
‘Tell me that was an approximate translation,’ I said to Marque on comms.
‘Close on word-for-word,’ Marque said. ‘Coarse language and all.’
‘I apologise, dear sentient, but I am unable to mitosis with you, I have an exclusive reproductive relationship with my spouses,’ Miko said.
The amoebas were silent, the organs within their transparent bodies drifting inside them.
‘I think you just confused the hell out of them,’ Marque said.
‘Why are you here with the cats?’ Haruka asked them. ‘The cat ships were carrying the cores, why are you subjugate species here?’
‘We don’t know,’ the amoebas said. ‘Our last shared experience was being back on our homeworld. We have no memories after that.’
‘They were a bottle,’ the heavies said. Their perfectly spherical black ship, the size of a house, approached us, and it was so dense that the stars were distorted like a lens around it. It stopped just far enough way to avoid us being sucked into it. ‘They carried Love, and they probably don’t remember anything.’
‘The AI is called Love?’ Haruka asked.
‘Yes. The cats took the amoebas’ ship and Love filled it with its nanos.’
‘Is that what happened?’ the amoebas asked. ‘We really can’t remember. Maybe the moles are right and the cats are mistreating us.’
‘We’ll take you home now, and ask you to consider joining the Empire,’ Haruka said. ‘We will never use you as storage.’
‘What will you use us for?’
‘Nothing!’ Haruka said. ‘You’ll just live and be happy and meet more golden dragons.’
The amoebas moved to the centre of their ship then clustered together to make a cushion-sized clump that flew to stick onto the wall of the ship closest to Miko. The clump waved its cilia at her, and all the amoeba’s internal organs – looking like transparent eyes – plastered themselves on the wall, as close as possible to her.
‘We really like that idea,’ they said.
‘Why is the AI called Love?’ Haruka asked the heavies.
‘It says “AI”, pronounced “Aye”, is a word that means “love” to you humans, and since we were travelling through human space it was appropriate to use your word.’
‘Not human space,’ Miko said. ‘Dragon space, and the word means nothing to us.’
‘Six hundred years of servitude and she’s still one hundred per cent dragon,’ Haruka said to me on comms. ‘Dragon space indeed.’ He changed to speaking to the heavies. ‘Honoured sentients. The amoebas were extra storage for the nanos, that makes sense. Why were you heavies and the moles here?’
‘The cats push us in the direction of anything in our way. We destroy it,’ the heavies said.
‘You’re a weapon?’
‘Something like that.’
‘And the moles?’
‘The cats value small moles as entertainment and trade resources,’ the heavies said.
‘So the moles are here to trade their children for passage,’ Haruka said on comms.
The amoebas interrupted the heavies. ‘The cats also give their waste to the moles, and the moles grow organics on their ships and give them to the cats.’
‘The cats’ kibble is replicated,’ Marque said. ‘So the moles must be providing a gourmet food item for the higher cat classes. If we take the moles from them, they’ll lose the gourmet food as well as the mole children.’
‘Good,’ Haruka replied on comms.
‘Can you transport us home?’ the amoebas asked. ‘It will take us many generations to return under our own power.’
‘Certainly,’ Haruka said.
Miko moved closer to me, drifting in her two-legged form. She was androgynous and human to my eyes, and her golden hair floated around her like a glowing halo in the starlight. The amoebas flowed across the wall of their ship to follow her as she moved.
‘Are there many more goldenscales in the Empire?’ they asked her.
‘Many more,’ Miko said.
The amoebas rippled. ‘We want to join.’
‘We’d also like to talk to you about the Empire,’ the heavies said.
‘Absolutely our pleasure,’ Haruka said.
‘No – you, Princess Miko,’ the heavies said. ‘We were never visited by your kind, only other dragons that did not sound pleasant. Do all of your kind sound like you?’
Miko raised her head, listening to Marque, then nodded, her hair shimmering with the movement. ‘I’m sure other goldenscales would love to visit you and see if they sound like me. It’s quite possible.’
‘I wish you were more dense, I can barely hear you,’ the heavies said.
‘We may be able to arrange something for you,’ Marque said.
The heavies drifted closer, and we were forced to move backwards to avoid their gravity well.
The heavies stopped. ‘We apologise. We just like the way Miko sounds. It is very . . . enticing.’
‘Do you need our assistance to make your way home as well?’ Haruka asked the heavies.
‘We don’t understand that word “home”, but we attempt to extract meaning from context,’ the heavies said. ‘You are offering to transport us the same way you transport the amoebas, and we do not need it. We are here. Home is not a place for us.’
Something moved in the corner of my eye. A flash of starlight reflected off something black and shiny that grew in size to form a cat teleport gate. There were two gates, one on each side of us, one expanding near Haruka and one near Miko. Both of me moved quickly to protect our spouses. Haruka was closest to me; I dived between him and the teleport gate before the nanos could finish it, and fired.
The nanos completed the gate faster than I could shoot. Before the others had even noticed the attack, a spherical drone the size of a basketball slipped out of the teleport gate and fired a laser weapon at Haruka. Everything was in slow motion. I used my suit jets with immaculate precision to stop in front of him, and felt a moment of grim triumph as the beam hit me square in the chest. I glanced sideways – the other me had destroyed a second teleporter and drone to protect Miko. The drone’s blast made pieces of her carbon-fibre suit glitter as they spun away from her headless body.
I fired again, and the drone melted into a spinning lump of molten metal.
My suit was wrecked, and frozen blood drifted in front of my face from my chest wound. The cold of raw space was like being hit all over, and icy needles filled my lungs.
Someone grabbed me and pushed me backwards and I landed on the deck of Miko’s ship with Miko and Haruka above me.
‘Take her down to the medlevel, Marque,’ Miko said, desperate. ‘If we move quickly—’
‘No!’ I wheezed.
‘You can’t save her, and she doesn’t want you to,’ Marque said. ‘Let her go.’
‘Never do this again, please, my love,’ Miko said with tears in her voice.
‘I won’t,’ I said. My chest wound felt like a block of ice and my lungs weren’t working. I didn’t have long.
Haruka said raised my head and cradled it. ‘You gave your life for me.’
‘That was the plan,’ I gasped.
Haruka kissed me hard, then they crushed me into them and held me tight as I faded.
‘I don’t deserve either of you,’ he whispered into the side of my head, and there was nothing after that.
I watched with horror as my other body died in Miko and Haruka’s arms, both of them looking shattered.
‘Get them all out!’ I shouted at Marque. ‘All of them. Amoebas, moles, heavies, all of them. They’ll build more—’
Marque interrupted me. ‘We are,’ it said.
A gate appeared in the living room then disappeared, leaving Miko and Haruka, who were clutching my other body, behind. Haruka gently lowered the corpse then strode to me, pulled me into a fierce embrace, and held me so tight it hurt.
‘Never, ever ever do that again!’ he rasped into my ear.
‘I won’t.’
‘Promise me. Promise!’
‘I promise, I promise,’ I said, holding him back just as hard. Miko came and wrapped herself around both of us.
‘Marque, dispose of the spare,’ I said.
‘Not a spare. That was you. You died. You died!’ Haruka said, his voice raw with pain. He pulled back and wiped the tears from his eyes. ‘Never,’ he gasped. ‘Again.’
I touched his face. ‘I understand. I promise.’ I looked up. ‘The subjugates, Marque?’
‘The dragons are moving them to safety. I’ll go in after them and make sure that area of space is completely clear of those damn nanos. I don’t even know whether they were AI nanos or cat ones.’ Its voice was more angry than I’d ever heard it. ‘They hurt my people in my space and they will pay. Oh.’
‘Oh?’ Miko said. ‘Oh what?’
‘The heavies can’t be moved by dragons; they’re too dense, they kill anyone that moves too close to them. They’re so dense that they’re immune to anything the nanos throw at them anyway. They’re safe.’
‘And the moles and amoebas?’
‘We moved them to empty space at the edge of the Empire until we can be sure they’re completely clean. The Empress would like to speak to you, Ambassador Haruka and Princess Miko, about sending some goldenscales to negotiate with them. Miko, you’re defacto leader of the goldenscales, and Haruka you’ll be needed to coordinate as you have a relationship with them already.’
‘Good idea,’ Haruka said, and obviously pulled himself together. ‘Let’s go help these people out, Miko.’ He turned to me. ‘Why aren’t you doing the handover to Graf?’
I raised both hands. ‘I couldn’t do anything until I was sure you two were okay.’
He kissed me on the forehead. ‘We’re fine, we moved them to a clear spot. We’ll be safe. Go and do the handover, you said yourself that you need to rest.’
Miko hoisted herself onto her hind legs, brushed her cheek against mine, and they went out together.